Friday, July 3, 2015

George Takei has been an ally of many Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. However, Takei's denunciation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as a "clown in blackface" is now causing some Democrats to try to put some distance between themselves and the Star Trek alum. Former Clinton staffer Paul Begala has declared Takei's controversial comments "awful" and called upon Takei to apologize to Thomas.

The backlash against Takei's remarks has now begun to reach Congress. As Roll Callreported in June, Democratic congressmen Mark Takai (Hawaii) and Mark Takano (Calif.) have recently formed a joint-fundraising committee dubbed the "Takaucus." A major forthcoming Takaucus October fundraising event will feature George Takei in New York City (the fundraiser will reportedly involve a preview of Takei's upcoming Broadway musical, Allegiance).

When reached for comment about the Takei controversy, a spokesman for Representative Takano issued the following statement:

"Despite the Congressman being highly offended by Justice Thomas' opinion, as he is the son of internment camp survivors, he disagrees with Mr. Takei's characterization."

So now even close Democratic allies of Takei are trying to isolate themselves from his controversial remarks. (At the time of this writing, Congressman Takai's office had not replied to a request for comment.)

In a later post,Takei denied that there is anything racist about calling Clarence Thomas a "clown in blackface." This denial has not satisfied many of those offended by his comments.

UPDATE: Facing increased political and popular pressure, George Takei has now retracted his earlier remarks about Justice Thomas. An excerpt from Takei's retraction is below:

While I continue to vehemently disagree with Justice Thomas, the words I chose, said in the heat of anger, were not carefully considered.I am reminded, especially on this July 4th holiday, that though we have the freedom to speak our minds, we must use that freedom judiciously. Each of us, as humans, have hot-button topics that can set-us off, and Justice Thomas had hit mine, that is clear. But my choice of words was regrettable, not because I do not believe Justice Thomas is deeply wrong, but because they were ad hominem and uncivil, and for that I am sorry.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Over at NRO, I consider the works of the 1960s academic Herbert Marcuse as anticipating the vicissitudes and inherent contradictions of the current PC culture war:

If the agents of the new intolerance ever get around to “deproblematizing,” as they would put it, Mount Rushmore, they might consider adding the visage of Herbert Marcuse to the crags of the Black Hills. Much of modern “political correctness” is really a New Left cultural politics that has made an uneasy peace with material prosperity. (The trajectory of Al Gore — from youthful critic of consumerism to gray-haired centimillionaire — is instructive here.) Marcuse’s work is much more sophisticated and rigorous than the tweets of many of today’s outrage activists, but that only makes it more important to engage with his ideas in order to comprehend the foundations of the Newer Left’s cultural crusade — and to see why this crusade fundamentally fails.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's announcement last night that the $10 bill would be modified to include both Alexander Hamilton and a woman has caused a combination of head-scratching and cheers. While many are happy that a woman will be included on #TheNew10, few have defended why Hamilton's bill had been revised (other than saying that the $10 was already up for redesign). Some activists had been calling for a revision of the $20, believing that Andrew Jackson's troubled legacy warranted a change. No one had been calling for a revision of the $10.

The Obama administration's decision to revise U.S. currency has been criticized by people on the left and the right. Even at Vox, Matt Yglesias writes that Treasury should have changed the $20 rather than the $10. (It's worth mentioning, though, that, if Harriet Tubman is added to the $10, it would be appropriate because both she and Hamilton were opponents of slavery.)

However one feels about this currency change, a happy side-effect is that it has caused numerous writers today to come out in defense of Alexander Hamilton and his legacy for the United States. A good place to start reading is Quin Hillyer's cri de coeur: "When it comes to American money, Hamilton is our history."

Over at The Federalist, defenses of Hamilton are pouring out. Ben Domenech celebrates Hamilton's heroism:

Had Alexander Hamilton died taking Redoubt Ten at Yorktown, bayonets fixed and muskets unloaded, he would have died a more significant American than his fellow Columbia student Barack Obama, who has now deigned to displace him from the ten dollar bill. To charge across that field under the flash of British artillery, rush into a hail of British musket fire, leap first over the parapet yelling for his fellow Patriots to follow and fight and by so doing win their freedom would have been enough for the man who had no father but became ours. He did not need to write and curate The Federalist; he did not need to construct the Constitution; he did not need to establish the U.S. Mint; he did not need to save the nation from financial calamity; he did not need to, in the aftermath of the 1800 election and in his dying act, destroy the political fortunes of the conniving traitor and would-be tyrant Aaron Burr.

Mollie Hemingway slams the administration's decision to focus on revising currency at this troubled time:

Yes, as the world burns from Ukraine to Iraq to the South China Sea, as we face a catastrophic seizure of data on all of our military and federal personnel, as the country faces real civil unrest and discord, the Obama administration has decided to turn its focus on the “problem” of a great immigrant Founding Father’s presence on our currency.

And Robert Tracinski outlines four reasons why Hamilton deserves a place on U.S. currency:

Alexander Hamilton was a classic American immigrant success story. Born in the West Indies, he was orphaned at about 11 years of age. As a teenager, he distinguished himself as a clerk for local exporters until friends raised money to send him to be educated in New York, where he quickly became an enthusiastic supporter of American independence.

Within months of the British withdrawal from America, Hamilton became the founder of the Bank of New York, which today is America’s oldest bank, and he became the central figure in the new nation’s financial center.

One of Hamilton's major causes after the Revolution was strengthening the union in part because he believed that a strong union was necessary to ward off foreign threats and to keep from internal chaos. He worked to create a vibrant economy and a strong military in the belief that a vigorous nation would be one more likely to defend its liberty. As the nation continues to struggle with economic stagnation and foreign-affairs debacles, that's an example the Obama administration would do well to learn from.

UPDATE:

Mark Krikorian reflects on the political implications of visual choices for monetary design.

Though he died at the young age of 49, he did more than even the best among us could do in three lifetimes. He was George Washington’s indispensable man during the Revolutionary War. He was a key behind-the-scenes player in the movement for a Constitutional Convention. He defended the new Constitution with remarkable erudition and sophistication in theFederalist papers, of which he was the most prolific author. During his brief tenure at Treasury, he not only righted the nation’s teetering public finances, he also formulated policies that became the backbone of our political economy for the next century. He even saved the country from an economic panic in 1792 by initiating a prototype of what the Federal Reserve calls open market operations.
Above all, he was the first statesman to grasp the full potential of the new nation. Somehow, he could see beyond these thirteen fractious, misbehaved states of 1788 to a future where America dominated the world. As he wrote at the conclusion of Federalist 11: “Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!”

Perhaps most important is the matter of his abolitionism, shaped by the horrors he witnessed in his Caribbean boyhood. Hamilton was a co-founder of one of the first non-Quaker anti-slavery societies. Ron Chernow, in the excellent biography that has inspired a Broadway musical, writes: “Few, if any, other founding fathers opposed slavery more consistently or toiled harder to eradicate it than Hamilton.” Adds his admiring biographer Forrest McDonald: “In one crucial respect ... his attitude never changed: he always championed liberty and abhorred slavery.”

Hamilton is a hero. Hamilton built this country with his bare hands, strong nose, and winning smile. He was the illegitimate son of a British officer who immigrated from the West Indies, buoyed by sheer force of intellect, and rose to shape our entire nation. His rags-to-riches story was so compelling that if he hadn’t existed, Horatio Alger would have had to make him up. Hamilton gave us federalism and central banking and the Coast Guard! He served as our first Secretary of the Treasury. He fought in the Revolutionary War. He started a newspaper. He weathered a sex scandal! He saved us from President Aaron Burr. He successfully imagined our country as the federal, industrial democracy we have today and served as an invaluable counterweight to Thomas Jefferson’s utopian visions of a yeoman farmers’ paradise. He founded the Bank of New York! He was so good at what he did that the Coast Guard was still using a communications guidebook he had written — in 1962! He was a redhead! He should be on more currency, not less. He should be on all the currency!

Hot Air digs into the Obama administration's possible psychology behind this change.

Friday, June 12, 2015

On Twitter and elsewhere in the conservosphere, you sometimes see righties arguing or implying that, of course, there are no serious conservative reasons to oppose Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) or the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). For the record, I do not have in mind here measured conservative defenses of TPA/TPP (for instance, this piece by Matt Lewis or these remarks by the editors at National Review*). There are valid arguments on behalf of TPA/TPP, and conservatives should not be afraid to make them.

However, there are also valid arguments against TPA and TPP from a conservative perspective--and these arguments go well beyond how much we can trust Barack Obama. So I think it premature for some on the right to try to excommunicate TPA/TPP dissenters from serious conservatism.

First of all, it is unclear whether unequivocal "free trade" is a sine qua non of conservatism. If conservatives want to say that, they will have to cast figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan out of the conservative narrative. Lincoln and Coolidge, after all, were major proponents of tariffs, and, while Reagan talked about opening up trade, he also took steps that many conservatives today would decry as "protectionist" (and even decried then as "protectionist"). As Alan Tonelson relates, Reagan did things like impose quotas on imported cars from Japan. That's hardly free trade.

Secondly (and perhaps more pressingly), it is far from clear that TPP will actually promote free trade. As I've suggested before, much of what goes by "free trade" in contemporary political discussions isn't actually free trade but instead the creation of internationally administered systems of managed trade. Now, perhaps those internationally administered systems of managed trade are helpful and worth advancing, but they are certainly not free trade.

Moreover, these administrative systems set up international bodies that can have influence over U.S. domestic policy. For instance, the U.S. House voted this week to no longer require meat producers to disclose the country of origin for meat. One major motivation for this was the threat of retaliatory tariffs enabled by the World Trade Organization. As the Wall Street Journalreports:

Wednesday’s 300-131 vote repealing the country-of-origin labels for meat follows a series of rulings by the World Trade Organization finding the labeling discriminates against animals imported from Canada and Mexico.
Canada and Mexico won a final WTO ruling in May, and are now seeking retaliatory actions valued at a combined $3.7 billion a year. Canada has threatened trade restrictions on a range of U.S. products, including meat, wine, chocolate, jewelry and furniture.

Maybe this repeal of country-of-origins labels is a good thing; maybe it isn't. But the fact remains that an international body (one not elected by or accountable to the U.S. voter) helped usher along this change in domestic policy. The establishment of international bodies by so-called "free trade" agreements could very legitimately concern small-government conservatives. These bodies might at times undermine the principles of the market and of national, republican governance.

Again, there are plausible arguments on behalf of TPP and TPA--but it would be a mistake to write off all conservative critics of these measures as charlatans and cranks. I respect many of the proponents and many of the opponents of these measures, and it's better to have a respectful conversation.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

At the moment, it still seems as though House leadership is struggling to find the votes to pass Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). TPA would give President Obama the ability to negotiate trade agreements and send them to Congress, which could not filibuster or amend these agreements. Passing TPA would likely be the first step for the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Currently, most House Democrats are opposed to TPA, so the Obama administration is relying on the support of House Republicans, especially leadership, to pass TPA. Speaker Boehner's leadership team is working hard to minimize the number of Republican defections on TPA. According to Politico, the Speaker's team hopes that around 190 of the 244 House Republicans will back TPA; the support of 30 or so Democrats would then allow TPA to pass.

At the moment, this certainly seems like an achievable goal. According to a helpful whip list compiled by The Hill, only about 30 Republicans are currently leaning against or outright opposed to TPA. 110 Republicans are in favor of TPA or leaning that way, while another 100 or so are undecided (or at least haven't announced their intentions). Meanwhile, 20 Democrats seem to be leaning in favor of TPA. If 20 Democrats have already come out in favor of TPA, 30 is a very doable number for the Speaker and the White House. No doubt, there are numerous Democrats waiting in the wings who would prefer to vote against TPA but will vote in favor of it if the president needs their vote. So some of the Democrats who are publicly undecided or only leaning against TPA will certainly switch to back it if the vote goes down to the wire.

I would guess, then, that opponents of TPA would need about 60 Republicans (possibly more) in order to stop the bill. The fact that the House has not yet held a vote on TPA suggests that that number is not totally impossible, but it could be a hard slog to get there.

Right now, the House Republican opposition to TPA includes an interesting assortment of insurgent conservatives and establishment-friendly voices. For instance, Dave Brat (Va.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Ted Yoho (Fla.), and Don Young (Alaska) are all part of the anti-TPA coalition. House Republicans face major pressure from donors and those in the conservative movement who have an ideological commitment to "free trade," so there is considerable incentive for Republicans to back TPA. Meanwhile, opponents of TPA have emphasized the dangers of presidential overreach and cast doubt on whether TPA/TPP actually advance market principles. This conflict explains why many House GOPers are keeping their options open.

According to a Politico story, a couple dozen House conservatives are negotiating with leadership. This faction, led by Ohio's Jim Jordan, are thinking about supporting TPA if leadership agrees to certain conditions: "that the charter for the federal Export-Import Bank...not be given a reauthorization vote; that rank-and-file lawmakers be given more power to reject future trade deals; and that aid for workers displaced by free trade be separated from the trade legislation." The support of this faction would help leadership get to 190 votes, but apparently leadership is concerned that this deal could endanger the bill as a whole. As this single set of negotiations suggests, there are a lot of moving pieces here.

Below, I offer a haphazard (i.e., far from complete) list of House Republicans whose actions may bear watching in the coming days:

Raul Labrador (Utah): Labrador is an up-and-comer with many allies in the Tea Party. At the moment, he seems to be leaning against TPA. If Labrador takes a stand against TPA, he could help rally support among conservatives. But, if he moves to back it, that could be a sign that opponents of TPA are on a sinking ship.

Jim Jordan (Ohio): As the leader of a major conservative faction, Jordan plays a pivotal role here. He's currently leaning no, but, if he can strike the aforementioned deal with leadership, he could end up backing TPA. His faction's support for TPA would likely be the death knell of opposition to the measure.

Trent Franks (Ariz.): Franks is known as a conservative, and he's expressed his doubts about TPA in the past. Currently undecided, he could be a good indicator of where House conservatives are leaning on the bill.

Kay Granger (Tex.): A respected voice among House Republicans, Grander is currently undecided. She's backed TPA before, but now she's expressing concerns about presidential overreach. If she does end up opposing TPA, that would be a major win for the bill's opponents.

Trey Gowdy (S.C.): Gowdy's been a loud critic of the abuse of presidential powers during the Obama administration, but he also has many allies in leadership. Currently, he's undecided on TPA. Obviously, both sides would like his support.

Bruce Poliquin (Maine): The rest of the Maine delegation in both the House and the Senate opposes TPA, and Poliquin likely faces a tough re-election race in 2016 (he first won his seat in 2014 by 6 points). He's currently undecided. Probably, the politically safe vote for him is against TPA. If he votes in favor of it, it might be because leadership really needs his vote.

Friday, June 5, 2015

If Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP, a huge trade compact) pass, they will do so because of overwhelming Republican support in Congress. Only 14 Democrats supported TPA in the Senate, and few House Democrats seem inclined to back TPP, so the ball is in Republicans' court here. As House leaders scramble for votes to give the president Trade Promotion Authority in hopes of formulating some Trans-Pacific Partnership, here are four interlocking questions that Republicans and conservatives should keep in mind:

Are TPA and the TPP good for the nation?

Are TPA and the TPP in accord with conservative principles?

Will TPA further disrupt the already unsettled Constitutional balance of powers between the president and the Congress?

Are TPA and the TPP good for the Republican Party?

I will leave to the side for the moment the question of the economic benefits of the TPP. In part, these benefits can't be ascertained because we don't know the details of the TPP. But I will mention in passing that numerous trade agreements over the past few decades have fallen well short of the promises of many of their proponents. For instance, the 2010 trade agreement with South Korea has led, according to theEconomic Policy Institute, to an increased trade deficit with South Korea and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs--all for a 1.8% growth in exports over the first three years (the trade deficit almost doubled during that time period).

Likewise, without knowing the details of the TPP, we can't say whether the TPP is in accord with conservative principles. However, it is also worth noting that, on the whole, much of what has been called "free trade" in recent decades has actually undermined the principles of the market, as I've suggested before. The media has interestingly shifted from describing supporters of the TPP as "free traders" to "pro-trade," which is probably a more accurate description--because the Trans-Pacific Partnership is likely to be an international agreement about managed (not free) trade. Perhaps that managed trade will be in the national interest (and perhaps not), but we shouldn't call it "free trade."

Regarding presidential power: Trade Promotion Authority does give considerable authority to the president. Under TPA, a trade agreement submitted to Congress can't be amended or filibustered, which substantially limits congressional influence. It's true that rules like TPA have been in effect in the past. As the Congressional Research Service noted in its very helpful write-up of TPA, presidents since FDR have used increased authority to negotiate trade deals.

The current administration, though, has tried to push presidential authority to extreme lengths. The Obama administration has attempted to rewrite laws using regulatory agencies and claimed its right to nullify laws at policy whim. The mammoth TPP could contain passages that a president--including Barack Obama's successors--could use to further aggrandize his or her power. Moreover, the language of the TPP could have loopholes that could allow the executive to take even more direct control of domestic policy.

A close attention to legislative language will be crucial in trying to keep an executive in check. Congressional allies of the TPP have advocated for TPA, but many of these TPA/TPP allies have apparently not even read the evolving draft of the TPP. A lack of trust surrounds negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has not been helped by the secrecy of the Obama administration. Moreover, while many congressional Republicans have proclaimed how little they trust the administration, many of these same Republicans are now working to pass TPA, which would give the president increased authority and realize one of his key second-term ambitions.

This brings us to the question of whether TPA and the TPP would be good for the GOP. Obviously, partisan concerns pale before the national interest and ethical/philosophical obligations, but electoral consequences are at least worth thinking about. The fact that the president is of the opposing party is not a sufficient reason for Republicans to block a major administrative objective; a policy measure that is good for the country and in accord with sound principles would be worth supporting no matter the party of the president. But, if a piece of legislation is more mixed, Republicans should be far less enthusiastic about it.

In the wake of the failure of 2012, many Republicans thought that the party should do more to reach out to the middle and working classes. A trade agenda that further undermines the working class would run afoul of this aim. Moreover, it seems fairly likely that the hollowing out of the nation's industrial workforce over the past few decades has been electorally problematic for the GOP. The growth of economic uncertainty in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio has made these states much harder for Republicans to win at the presidential level. Policy measures that would further damage the economic interests of American workers could put Republicans farther away from a sustainable governing majority.

Polling on the TPP and TPA is surprisingly sparse, but these polls suggest that many voters--especially in the Rustbelt (which the GOP could stand to do much better in)--have serious doubts about the current trade regime. Polling suggests that many voters are skeptical about giving more trade authority to the president. A PPP poll finds that voters in Ohio are rather hostile to the TPP (nearly two-thirds oppose it). Many in the grassroots left oppose TPP/TPA, but opponents of these measures on the insurgent right include Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, many Breitbart writers, and the Conservative Review team.

Ultimately, I think that there are legitimate reasons both to oppose and to support TPP/TPA (Ramesh Ponnuru has been one of the more persuasive conservative supporters). As Republican House members consider whether or not to support TPA, they should not be afraid to ask tough questions. Nor should they buy the idea that skepticism about the TPP or TPA is the product of economic ignorance or intellectual weakness. Legislative due diligence often demands a tough-minded resistance to inherited dogma.

In the Popeye universe, the character Wimpy would famously promise, "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." In many respects, Trade Promotion Authority offers a similar deal: allies of TPA want us to give the president increased executive power today in exchange for potential economic growth tomorrow. That growth may or may not come, but the expansion of presidential power is guaranteed. Perhaps that's a deal worth making, but we should be honest about the uncertainties of that trade.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's comments about legal immigration, reported earlier this week by Matthew Boyle, have raised a semi-ruckus on the Net. This paragraph in particular seems to have ignited howls of outrage and yelps of pleasure:

In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying—the next president and the next congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages, because the more I’ve talked to folks, I’ve talked to Senator Sessions and others out there—but it is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today—is what is this doing for American workers looking for jobs, what is this doing to wages, and we need to have that be at the forefront of our discussion going forward.

It's interesting that some should view as controversial the idea that protecting the American worker should be an important consideration for immigration policy. But some apparently do. Mark Krikorian outlines some of the vituperative attacks directed at Walker's comments (even some Senate Republicans are grousing).

But some of these attacks lack argumentative clarity. For instance, this Talking Points Memo story breathlessly warns that Walker "shows openness to limiting legal immigration," which it portrays as some hardcore right-wing viewpoint. TPM is not alone in its suggestion that limiting legal immigration is somehow beyond the norms of acceptable political debate. However, current immigration law already limits legal immigration (setting particular caps on it), and very few politicians are running on pure open borders. Barack Obama has not called for removing all limits on legal immigration, and neither has Hillary Clinton. Are they now rabidly right-wing?

For the record, only 7% of Americans want immigration levels increased, so supporters of unlimited legal immigration are a tiny minority. And, if we are going to have limits on legal immigration, what standard should we use?

The intensity of the attacks on Governor Walker's remarks suggests how some in the Beltway want to avoid having a real debate about how to ensure opportunity for all and how to integrate immigrants into the American body politic. Many in the elite want to foist a narrow vision of immigration "reform" on the nation (basically, window-dressing enforcement, instant legalization of illegal immigrants, and expanded guest-worker programs). But they do not have a monopoly on "reform."

As I've suggested earlier, conservatives and Republicans should not be afraid to put forward immigration reform that helps immigrants succeed in the American economy and become full members of the American body politic. Part of the defense of the wages of the American worker includes the defense of the wages of legal immigrants, so seeking to defend the American worker is hardly anti-immigrant. We can have an immigration policy that is both pro-middle class and pro-immigrant. And I think it is at least arguable that one of the key ideas of this immigration policy would include defending the ladder of opportunity so that immigrants and the native born (which often includes the children of immigrants) have a chance at prosperity.

Governor Walker's exact policy proposals for immigration are still evolving (as Mickey Kaus reminds us), but these remarks hint that he might at least be thinking about how to forge an immigration policy that encourages opportunity and civic integration. Far from being a right-wing pander, that kind of policy vision should be of interest to people across the political spectrum.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Last week saw the 150th anniversary of the Union victory in the Civil War, and a bevy of thinkpieces about the war as a whole. Perhaps one of the more incendiary pieces was this essay by Harold Meyerson, which argued that today's Republican party was the party of the Confederacy:

Fueled by the mega-donations of the mega-rich, today’s Republican Party is not just far from being the party of Lincoln: It’s really the party of Jefferson Davis. It suppresses black voting; it opposes federal efforts to mitigate poverty; it objects to federal investment in infrastructure and education just as the antebellum South opposed internal improvements and rejected public education; it scorns compromise. It is nearly all white. It is the lineal descendant of Lee’s army, and the descendants of Grant’s have yet to subdue it.

As a view of contemporary trends, this picture has numerous distortions.

It's hard to say that the ideological Left and the agenda of the Obama administration (and a would-be Clinton administration) have not benefited from the "mega-donations of the mega-rich." President Obama's boardroom progressivism has relied upon alliances with connected Wall Street players and other corporate interests.

And Meyerson's portrayal of the aims of the contemporary GOP is also somewhat problematic. To look at only a couple examples: Many Republicans are not opposed to efforts to alleviate poverty, but they doubt that the Left's preferred efforts to deal with poverty will be helpful over the long-term. The fact that Republicans propose alternative policies to deal with poverty does not mean that they don't want to help limit it. On education policy, anxiety about a federal takeover is hardly confined to Republicans. Americans left, right, and center are worried about putting education policy in the hands of unelected federal bureaucrats.

This portrait of the GOP is also troubled on a historical level. For instance, Rich Lowry's 2013 book about Lincoln, Lincoln Unbound, argues that, contrary to Meyerson, there are substantial continuities between an opportunity-driven conservatism and Lincoln's policies. Lincoln's case for economic uplift, popular prosperity, and the dignity of the individual has many resonances with contemporary conservatism.

Friday, April 3, 2015

A couple points to add to my NRO article yesterday looking at the contrast between a support for civic pluralism and a devotion to an imperialist secularism (that demands the removal of all religion from the public square):

On Twitter, Andrew Walker notes a tweet by Zack Ford at ThinkProgress:

This tweet demonstrates the impulses of some (especially on the far left) to argue that religious beliefs have no place in the public square. The fact that folks like Martin Luther King did not divorce their beliefs from there actions reveals some of the limits of Ford's declaration. It is unclear why religious people in Ford's worldview should be particularly burdened and not be allowed to work to express their beliefs.

At the Corner, Yuval Levin draws attention to the way that extremist progressives are attempting to turn back the clock on religious tolerance:

Madison’s case against an established church, perhaps most notably in his 1785 “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” was rooted in a core principle of religious liberty that is particularly important to remember in the kinds of debates we have seen in the last few years: That religious freedom is not a freedom to do what you want, but a freedom to do what you must. It’s not a freedom from constraint, but a recognition of a constraint higher than even the law and therefore prior to it and deserving of some leeway from legal obligations when reasonably possible.

Levin finds that, unlike Madison, many radical leftists want to say to believers that they can have their own private beliefs but that they cannot form institutions in accord with these beliefs because such institutions could challenge the established church of progressive secularism.

In light of our stimulating conversation in the breakroom the other day, I thought I would write up the following memo to summarize my position on this all-important question: What shall we do with our witches? I apologize again if the flecks of quinoa that sprayed from my mouth during our conversation were interpreted by anyone as a microaggression. In the future, I will be sure to swallow before I speak.

In the days of old, inquisitors would burn, strangle, behead, and otherwise terminate the lives of witches. Recollection of that fact--and praise for it having now been discontinued--occasioned our conversation in the first place. While I for one am always glad to recognize the benightedness of the past, I think we should also be wary about throwing out the baby with the proverbial bathwater.

As they understood in Salem, Spain, and elsewhere, witches are a tricky lot. Because their influence can be so problematic, we have to be vigilant. A witch is tainted at the very heart of its being (what more primitive times would call a "soul"), and the Inquisition must be willing to monitor hearts for any sign of witchcraft. A single word can reveal someone to be a witch. What matters is the identity of the witch, not what a witch does. Words, thoughts, actions, feelings--anything can reveal a witch, and we need to be on guard for all.

Technology may be responsible for so much ecological destruction, but it has provided numerous opportunities to our Inquisition. The advent of advanced recording technologies has afforded so many more ways of monitoring the speech and thoughts of witches. The rise of mass media has given us the ability to focus on a single incident of witchcraft and turn the wrath of society against that witch, and the Internet has democratized the Inquisition, providing us with numerous surrogates with which to target and punish. The Internet never forgets, so a witch can never escape its sentence.

However, the very totalizing tendencies of the media combined with a permanent, centralized institution of cultural memory have posed a significant issue about what to do with witches. In the old days, a witch’s perfidy would not necessarily be universally broadcast. If shunned, the witch could go elsewhere. Now, a witch cannot escape once it is found out. So how will a witch live once convicted of witchcraft?

Let us take the following hypothetical: A witch has revealed its problematic core (by saying something problematic, dressing in a problematic way, having a problematic tattoo, liking a problematic book, and so forth), and the full wrath of the Inquisition has been turned against it. It has rightly lost its job or been expelled from its university or its business has been destroyed or whatever. It rightly stands as a beacon of shame and bigotry. It is rightly recognized as the less-than-human scum that it is. So what should be done with our witch?

Shall the witch get a new job? Our Inquisition has surely failed if a witch can get a new job after being terminated from an old one because of its witchcraft. Wickedness has stamped the witch with an indelible mark. Shame should follow the witch wherever it goes (ah, the glories of the Internet!). Who would want to employ this monster? Who would want it as a student? No decent person or socially conscious institution.

Exiled from the marketplace and the public square, the witch will rightly be unable to support itself. Perhaps the witch might turn to its family for financial support. But this again presents a problem for our Inquisition: Nothing--including family ties--should stand in the way of Inquisitorial justice. If its family supports a witch, they should be shunned and attacked, too. Perhaps its family can be blamed for making it a witch. Those who choose to aid a witch, whether family or friends or disinterested bystanders, are guilty of enabling witchcraft.

Exiled from employment and shunned by its family, should the witch get on public assistance? There, we have an ultimate irony: public funds being used to care for someone who is the enemy of the public. Public funds should be used to assist those who are victims of society--not witches.

Some of my esteemed colleagues have held out for the hope of reeducation. They believe that perhaps a witch can redeem itself by bowing before the might of the Inquisition and kissing the toes of the just. According to this theory, a witch’s brain can be cleansed of impure thoughts, and paying sufficient tribute can testify to this cleansing. I fear that reeducation falls short on a few levels. Thankfully, we live in a zero-tolerance age, but holding out the hope of pardon might suggest to potential witches that they could actually have a life after their witchcraft is revealed. That seems to me to be tantamount to encouraging witches. Witches likely have distorted personalities (as some psychologists have shown), so I am very doubtful that they can be saved. Very likely, their witchcraft would only reassert itself in more subtle ways. And besides, why should a “former witch” (if such a thing is even possible) have the opportunities of a true member of the community? While reeducation can show the power of the Inquisition, it might also provide aid and comfort to witches and their allies. The Inquisition is not in the mercy business but the justice one, and justice allows for no half-measures.

So a witch has been denied all hope of employment and of comfort from family and friends. It should have no access to public assistance, and reeducation is a doubtful prospect. The only remaining alternative for a witch (assuming it does not try to adopt another identity) is to live on the streets. While I am second to none in applauding the public immiseration of witches as a tool for instructing the masses, homeless witches could pose a security threat to the innocent. They could also continue to peddle their problematic witchcraft. Moreover, these disgraced witches would, no matter how small their footprints, contribute to the destruction of this earth through their consumption of various ill-gotten goods. (The long-term imprisonment of witches presents similar ecological, financial, and moral costs.)

Therefore, I wonder if the execution of witches might be a practical--and I daresay humane--solution to the problem of witches in the era of our beloved Inquisition. Execution would solve the problem of what to do with undesirable life and it would still provide an edifying spectacle to the nation as a whole. And I cannot see how it would be to the detriment of the Inquisition to offer witches an instantaneous death as opposed to a long twilight of suffering and exclusion. This death need not be burning. I am open to other suggestions, whether beheading or electrocution or lethal injection. Just because a witch is the embodiment of the horrific does not mean that we need to be barbaric in treating it.

A brief trigger warning: what I am about to discuss might shock, offend, and, even traumatize. But we Inquisitors must sometimes face unflinchingly the utmost of malignancies. Some partisans of the atavistic (may they soon perish!) might object to the righteous punishment of witches. They hold that, while we can censure certain actions, we should be wary about exiling people from the public square for their mere words or thoughts--that stamping out evil is different from crushing people. In defense of this position, such partisans argue that we are all fallen beings, that we are all sure to make mistakes, and that understanding is often better than wrath. They claim that what we term witchcraft others might think of as a fair-minded exploration of ideas and that different people might see different things as witchcraft. They suggest that our Inquisition, with its focus on punishing witches, can distract from the broader purpose of doing good and finding the truth (their words, not mine). They think that fear is often an insufficient goad to virtue and that escalating terror is no boon to society. Some of them even argue that tolerance has a positive value (not recognizing that tolerance is simply an acceptance of wrongs).

The preposterousness and perniciousness of such arguments make them beneath all rational regard. In fact, I rather believe that advancing them is a de facto admission that one is a witch. Nothing more need be said about those silly propositions (though much could be said and done to those with the temerity to make them).

Thus, my fellow fighters for justice, I believe that the principles of our Inquisition lead to the conclusion that terminating the lives of witches is the most practical of outcomes. The instant a witch reveals itself with its forked tongue, it should be expunged from the record of human history. Let us never shirk from the obligation to use terror to advance the cause of justice, nor allow doubting scruples to hold back the ambitions of perfection.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Today, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the Obama administration a request for an expedited appeal of Judge Andrew Hanen's decision to put an injunction on the president's executive dictates on immigration at the end of last year. Hanen had put the injunction in place while he worked on his final ruling on the matter. The Fifth Circuit may or may not decide to stay Hanen's injunction. The hearing will take place on April 17. The text of the Fifth Circuit's decision is here.

As Josh Blackman has noted, the Obama administration has now taken to arguing that Hanen's injunction threatens the ability of the president to protect the nation because granting work permits to illegal immigrants is of vital national-security importance. If it is such a vital interest, the Obama administration needs to explain why it has put off issuing these work permits for years (and also how granting work permits to illegal immigrants specifically advances national security). Hanen seemed skeptical about claims that national security demands that the president nullify immigration law, so we'll have to see whether members of the Fifth Circuit will be persuaded by the administration's reasoning.

The next few weeks might tell us whether the Fifth Circuit will sign off on a radically empowered executive or whether it will instead put in the hard work of defending the separation of powers.